


Fireworks

by AmnesiaticRoses



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping, Voltron Halloween Fic Fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-01-15 19:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12327588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmnesiaticRoses/pseuds/AmnesiaticRoses
Summary: Voltron is treated to a victory party -- a planet-wide one. But not all of the locals are celebrating, and are instead looking to exploit the party as the paladins let their guards down.Written from prompts provided from Grimkohai, technically using the one for the third week of October -- "Festival" -- but if I don't get this out of my hands I'm going to tweak it into a mess.





	1. This Is How Serpent People Party

**Author's Note:**

> This is largely unbeta-ed (except one bit a friend very helpfully read over!), so if you see errors or anything, please feel free to point them out so I can fix. As always, I don't own the characters or the world.

It was an accident.

Lance knew, he KNEW better. He did. But he… he wasn’t thinking right. That was it. 

It wasn’t like this too often. There was fighting, and there was diplomacy and there was travel. Sometimes there was even down time, relaxing or doing light training. But this… this was a party, just for them. A PLANET-WIDE party. Voltron had blown the Galra ships out of the sky like so many fireworks, and now there were real fireworks overhead and several types of music filtering down the road and FOOD, so much food. The njerics seemed to do food the way most humans did hard alcohol, lining them up like shots. Some of the samples were literally held out to them, like cups of water during a lengthy footrace. 

Lance hadn’t liked everything he’d tried, and felt pretty sure a few of them actually _had_ alcohol in despite not being able to taste any, but the stuff he did like? Well, it wasn’t Hunk’s cooking, but it beat most of the food he’d tried in space. At least, most of the stuff he’d tried when he wasn’t being hypnotized...

He’d wound up by himself. The whole group had been together, at the start, but first Shiro had seen something and cajoled Keith into going with him to get a better look. Hunk and Coran had wandered off, debating the ingredients of one of the spicier food items, which had been set out in narrow rails in front of a table staffed by two stocky, snake-like njerics in pale orange cloaks. He’d asked Allura questions about the planet as they navigated the jostling crowds, trying to smile charmingly and look interested in her history lesson. But then a couple civic leaders had come to her with questions, and she’d left he and Pidge to go with them. 

The two of them had been wandering around together for a while after that, sampling the foods and carrying on the sort of pleasantly low-key conversations he could find with Pidge when technology didn’t get its claws in her. But at some point he realized a comfortable lull in the conversation had turned into an extended one, and when he looked around, he found that she had vanished.

She’d probably said something, he thought as he twisted this way and that, scanning the crowds. Friendly-for-a-snake faces drifted by, hissing words of thanks and support that he accepted absently. She’d probably said something and he missed it. There was noise after all - a lot of noise. Fireworks and music and conversation and under it all a constant abrasive scratching like sandpaper on stone as a city’s worth of njerics moved around them. They’d basically been shouting their conversation anyway, hadn’t they?

Still, he started searching, if for no other reason than a lack of anything better to do. The food, the party, they were everywhere. Nothing wrong with looking for Pidge, or Allura, or Hunk or ANYONE at the same time as he took it all in, eh?

He snagged another couple food samples and wound through the crowd, stumbling a couple times and eventually ending up at the edge of a small, less populated square. A few njerics in the gold-and-green mantles of their high council were talking, but one oriented on him as he wandered in.

“You look for your teammate?” it asked, undulating over to him. 

It -- all of them -- were essentially just snakes with arms and varying rills on their heads. Their motion, Lance found equal parts fascinating and just weird. He started to nod, then remembered that njerics did not nod (the closest was a kind of swaying bow) and generally found the gesture a bit offputting. “Yeah,” he said, holding his ground as the other two council members followed their friend over. “Have you seen her?” 

There was a hesitation, then the one who’d initially spoken extended its head toward a small arch in the wall across the square. “The last one we saw went up that way.” The other two hissed their agreement and turned in that direction as well.

“Just a few minutes gone,” one said.

“You can catch if you hurry,” added the remaining one. 

Lance thanked them, trying not to get too caught up in the weird way they phrased things. This was a party, and he was the life of any party he was at, not some… some language-nitpicking party pooper. The arch led to a long, winding ramp heading up the side of a hill -- njerics didn’t seem big on stairs. It looked like a long way up. He hesitated, idly finishing off the food in his hands. Was this really worth it? Reeeeally?

Yeah, his mind decided grudgingly. Yeah, it was. Or at least, it was better than aimlessly wandering. He liked njerics well enough, but too much time around too many aliens and he just missed the humanoid forms of his friends.

With an audible sigh, as though this were a burden forced upon him by an uncaring world, Lance started up the ramp.

It wound a tight, serpentine (ha ha) pattern up the stony slope of the hill, presumably to keep it from getting too steep to slither up. Lance gave serious thought to just climbing up the rocks and cutting straight for the top, but the night was warm, the fireworks were very pretty, and he was feeling almost definitely sure now that some of the refreshments had been alcoholic. In the end he just continued his leisurely amble all the way to the top. He emerged through another stone arch and came to a dead stop.

It was beautiful.

The top of the hill had been leveled off and paved in beautiful, sand-smoothed chunks of stone -- azure, turquoise, a foamy green. The pattern was carefully random, sealed in the seams with bronze lines that chased and crossed one another like the flight paths of startled birds. The polished surfaces of the stones reflected the blooms of fiery color in the sky as they flared and died. Only a few trees grew around the edges, leaving a near perfect view of the city below, which was alive with a gorgeous mix of artificial and natural light. Over the susurration of discussion and movement from below came the strains of a delicate song, played on some sort of hammer-and-string instrument he guessed.

Lance took a few steps forward, spellbound by the sight. It was on the fourth step that a familiar voice asked, “Lance?”

It wasn’t Pidge. It was Keith. He stood in the shadows of one of the sparse trees, arms folded. His face, in the ever-changing light of the festival, was unreadable.

“Hey! Keith,” Lance said, walking over and trying not to sound too disappointed. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Just… watching.”

That tone. Lance almost laughed. None of them were much good at lying, and Keith certainly could be thuddingly obvious when he wanted to be… er, didn’t want to be. He wondered, briefly at least, if the lions liked a lack of deception in general when picking their paladins. He also wondered if he should just get back out of here and leave Keith to his… whatever. But no. Lance didn’t feel like going back down and continuing a random sojourn once more, so he said, “Watching what? The party?”

“Yes.” Keith turned from Lance to scan the crowds down below. “I thought you were with the others?”

“Yeah, we all ended up finding different things to look at,” Lance said, ambling closer. “Except Allura. I think she was doing some sort of… diplomacy thing.” He flapped a hand in dismissal of that.

“This whole festival is a diplomacy thing,” Keith said, after a brief pause where Lance got the distinct impression that he was trying to figure out if Lance was teasing.

“Sure, but the fun sort of diplomacy.”

Keith favored him with a look that Lance chose to read as “there is no fun diplomacy.”

“Well, what about Shiro? I thought you two were going to look at some… painter, was it?”

“We got separated.”

The words came out clipped as Keith turned back to the crowd. Lance looked from the landscape to Keith, then back again as his somewhat floaty concentration fastened onto a few facts. “So you’re looking for him.”

“Yes.”

“From up here?”

“Obviously.”

“You think you’d be able to pick him out from up here?” Lance squinted down at the crowd.

“Him, yes.”

“But everyone’s so tiny from-”

“This would be easier without the running commentary.” Keith didn’t sound angry, but he did sound... impatient. Stressed. 

Lance shrugged into the darkness and drifted the last few paces to stand by Keith, peering down into the throng. From up here he could see the crowd only as a mass, a shifting sea of bodies. The indistinct faces, most covered with brightly colored scales, put him in mind of sequined masks at a masquerade. The pair stood in silence for a while.

“It’s a lot of people,” Lance said after a while.

“Not. Helping.”

Again, something in his voice pushed through the pleasant haze in Lance’s head. “Why are you so worried?” he asked, turning his whole body to face Keith. “Shiro can probably take care of himself better than any of us. Did something… happen?”

No answer.

“Keith?”

“No!” Well, THAT sounded really defensive. Lance let that just sit in the evening air for a moment, and sure enough, Keith chased it with “I mean, probably not. I was walking, and one second he was there, and the next, he wasn’t anywhere. We probably just got separated. I mean, LOOK at all the people.” He gestured toward the crowded streets. “But everything down there was so… relaxed.” Lance’s eyes followed Keith’s hand as it lowered, the fingers curling into a fist as it reached his side.. “Too relaxed. It felt like something happened. Like someone took advantage of our inattention.”

That got Lance thinking. Inattention? Yeah, that might be a good word for it. He certainly felt inattentive. Pidge had wandered off under his nose. “Do you want to go find Allura? I’ll bet the njeric council members at the bottom of the hill can help us find her, and we can get help to find everyone.” He kept his eyes on Keith’s hand. Fireworks painted it in blue and gold. “It might not be a bad idea to all stick together.”

“No… no.” Lance swore he could see the effort it took for Keith to loose his fingers. “I’m just… it’s stupid. I’m just being paranoid.”

And that’s when the mistake happened. At least he called it a mistake in his head when he thought about it later. He might have called it a mistake when he talked about it to Keith, except there was no way, later, that he’d ever talk with Keith, or ANYONE, about it. He blamed Hunk, in the back of his head. When Lance felt low, his friend was always there, with a strong shoulder, a listening ear, and…

Lance leaned over and wrapped his arms around Keith, in what felt like the only logical move at that moment in his admittedly cloudy head. “It’s OK,” he said. “You’re not being paranoid. You’re being concerned. That’s a good thing.”

Keith had gone completely still, as though he thought Lance’s arms might cut him open if he dared move. “What… are you doing?” he asked carefully.

“I’m telling you not to worry about things so much,” Lance said, squeezing tighter for a moment, then letting go and stepping back. To his disappointment, Keith didn’t look terribly reassured. In fact, he looked suspicious.”Come on,” Lance tried again, seizing Keith by the sleeve and trying to tow him back toward the ramp. It only occurred to him later that, in his state, the only reason he succeeded was that Keith chose to go along with him. “We’re finding Allura, and then finding the others. I mean, Pidge disappeared too. We were just walking and talking, then she must have seen something and just-”

“Wait.” Suddenly it was Keith’s hand on his arm, pulling him to a stop just inside the arch. “Pidge too?”

“Yeah.” Lance smiled, but a sense of unease settled into him at Keith’s intensity. “Like I said, I’m sure she just got distracted. Or she turned when I went straight.” He looked at the look on Keith’s face. “Come on, we’ll be able to find them easy enough with the castle. Or the lions. But they’re fine, right? Who could kidnap a paladin of Voltron in all of this without getting noticed?” He looked out over the edge of the plateau, down toward the throng. 

Keith didn’t answer, but his lips pursed to a thin line, looking almost as though they’d been drawn on with a pencil. He started down the ramp, leaving Lance trailing after him. Going down the hill, on the bright side, was a lot easier than up, and in the space off four fireworks, they’d jogged to the bottom. 

Except when they got there, the council members had apparently moved on. There were a handful of regular civilians, some with long cloaks attached where their arms met their torsos. Two of them paused upon seeing the paladins, then leaned their heads together, whispering like schoolgirls. 

“Wonder where they went,” Lance said, shading his eyes against the pulses of light in the sky. He felt himself sway a little, and some small part in the back of his mind wondered just how many of those little food samples had contained alcohol. 

Keith strode over to one of the pairs of gossiping njerics and said, “Hey! Uh… excuse me?” When both of them turned toward him with uncanny interest, black eyes shining, he plunged on. “We were wondering where we could find one of the council members?”

The two exchanged looks with one another, then the one on the left rasped out, “Let us take you to them. They gather, for the proclamation to your Altean princess, and perhaps to discuss any remaining galra sympathizers on our world. Come, come, we avoid the worst of the crowd.” The one on the right made a hissing noise Lance couldn’t even begin to pick out a meaning for and they both turned, moving quickly away down a different street from the one Lance had initially taken. Keith shot a glance back at Lance, then gave a quick tilt of his head. _Coming?_

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance said, somewhat irritated at Keith taking over -- hadn’t it been his idea, after all? But it was getting done, and worry was one of those communicable emotions. Get this done now, worry about who stole whose thunder later.

The njerics’ promise of fewer crowds turned out to be entirely accurate. They led the paladins down a side street into what seemed like an alley between rows of dome-shaped buildings. Here and there some lone njerics lounged in curled piles or leaned against the curves of buildings. All ignored the quartet as they moved past. 

“So where is this proclamation thing?” Lance asked, just before tripping over his own feet and catching himself with a hand on one of the buildings. How long did alcohol take to wear off? He hadn’t dealt with this often, and usually it cleared off when he was asleep.

The lead njeric waved one of his blue-and-orange-scaled hands ahead of them and a shade to the right. “See the tall building? There is a grand outdoor court on the north side. It can be seen from here. That is where she meets with our leaders. It has begun, but should last two hours, at the least.”

He and Keith both looked up to see he’d indicated a massive, distant building. Lance had noticed it a few times -- it had to be a hundred feet tall if it was anything, and towered over most of the city like Shiro among the Arusians -- but hadn’t really bothered wondering what was inside beyond “something important.” The council? That made sense. As they walked, he got a better view of the plateau the njeric presumably meant. It was a flat space jutting out from the circular construction. And-

His stomach lurched as the toe of his boot caught on something. The view of the council building started to tilt, then got replaced with the ground as he just barely caught himself again. 

A second later, a streak of motion zipped across his field of vision. He caught clear sight of it for the merest of seconds - an impression of a segmented silver and blue metal tube and red eyes like marbles - then it was a blur again. It zipped past Keith as he turned, probably at the sound of Lance falling. Before Lance could straighten up, he heard an alarmed shout from Keith and saw him raise a foot, kicking out toward the ground to Lance’s left. 

“Hey, careful.” Lance complained, trying to cover his embarrassment. “I just saw-”

At the same time, Keith started “Look out f-” before he cut his warning off with a hiss of pain. His eyes narrowed, and he started to turn away from Lance, but in the middle of the motion he just … fell. The abruptness of it struck Lance like ice water -- watching Keith crumble bonelessly to the ground.

And over his falling form, Lance saw the two njerics watching impassively. Just waiting on it to happen. One of them glanced over at him.

Every instinct shifted gears hard, from _slightly worried_ to _holy crap danger_.

Mental haze or no, he ran through his options in the space of a blink. Fight? He could, but they were in close quarters, and njerics were pretty large -- their average height still loomed over even Hunk. Was leaving Keith an option? Maybe he could get them to follow... 

He started to turn, reaching for his bayard as he did, but before his fingers could close on the reassuring weight of the weapon, he felt a foreign hand on his shoulder. It landed heavily and shoved him down and to his left, adding force and a new direction to his turning. He saw the brightly patterned fabric of a njeric cloak obscure Keith, then the side of the of a curved buildings rushing up to meet him and-


	2. Waking Up Is Hard to Do

Lance hit the ground full out, and his brain muzzily tried to work out what had just happened. He’d been pushed. Toward a wall. Where had the wall gone? This was the ground. Not a wall. Right? His head ached fiercely, and he felt nauseated. There was scuffling nearly. Shouting. Could they keep it down? Everything felt heavy, far too heavy, and he wanted to drift off again…

There was a raspy slithering. Something moving nearby. The rustle of clothing. A voice, loud and commanding, somewhere overhead. “Stop. We don’t need to deliver all of you alive.”

That took a moment to percolate. But once he processed the words, Lance’s eyes flew open.

Mistake. He closed them again immediately, but too late, the headache flared, bright as a star, and the nausea threatened to engulf him. No, there wasn’t time for this! He waited only a couple seconds, until the feeling began to fade, then cracked his eyes open again, more slowly this time. 

His field of vision was largely taken up by Keith’s legs. His feet weren’t touching the ground. He wasn’t moving. “Good. Now you’ll let them bind you. Properly, this time,” the voice said, and Keith’s legs swayed a little as thought he had been shaken in emphasis. 

For a brief time, Lance left like he couldn’t look away from what he could see of Keith. So still. Was he… he couldn’t be…

Aggravated hissing came from somewhere beyond. Lance steeled himself and forced his attention to the rest of the area.

He lay on the ground in one of those little open squares that dotted the streets in this city. Like all of them that he’d seen so far, it was basically devoid of detritus, which left a fair amount of room for basically the whole Voltron team.

Directly across from him, Shiro was allowing himself to be tied up. “Allowing himself” was the only way Lance could describe the scene -- he was sitting there, glaring daggers at the njeric who was looping what seemed like an excessive amount of metal-threaded rope around and around and around him. The look said, “I could absolutely break you if it wouldn’t put others in danger.” But when he opened his mouth, he only said, “You better hope neither of them is badly hurt.”

“Gag him, too,” Was the only reply.

A bit to Shiro’s right, Pidge was not only tied up, her bindings were tied to a metal loop stuck into the back of one of the buildings that surrounded the square. She was already gagged, and looked thoroughly pissed off about it. Still, as he watched her glaring at the njeric who was binding Shiro, he thought she looked a little unfocused too.

A little past her, Hunk and Coran were bound back to back, sitting on the ground. Both appeared to be completely insensible, but he could see both were still breathing. 

“You couldn’t pick a better place?” One of the njerics was saying -- the one who was just finishing binding Shiro. Two others moved into view, perhaps inspecting the knots, and the one next to Lance dropped Keith with a carelessness that made Lance’s blood run cold once more. Keith didn’t even make a sound, only landed in a heap, blocking Lance’s view of the rest of the square. “We’re out in the open, and the transport won’t be here for another few hours. We’re going to get _found_ here.”

He heard the one who’d been standing over him slither over to its compatriots. “This district is largely deserted after the attacks. No ships are flying while the fireworks are going off. I think, if we get found, we’re better off having plenty of escape routes, rather than cornering ourselves in some building. Don’t you?” Its voice was low and dangerous. If he didn’t know it was a snake saying them, he might have called the tone wolfish.

“We barely saw anyone when we gathered those last two,” another said, and this voice he recognized as the one who’d told them where Allura was. Where she was supposed to be. The one with orange and blue scales. 

Lance’s mind was trying to race, but it was hard. So hard. Everything was wrapped in cotton, every thought struggling to break free. It was as though everything in his head were suddenly very fragile, and trying to use any of it too quickly would only break things. They needed help. If Shiro were free, maybe he could take care of them. Maybe even Keith, but he was completely out cold. Lance needed to act, he knew that, but everything still felt made of lead. He could probably get up, but for the moment, it seemed they didn’t realize he was awake. Right now, just getting to his feet would take long enough that they’d easily stop him before he was a real threat.

“The soporific in their food seems to have done its job,” one of the others said, his voice moving from left to right around Lance. The muted sounds of Pidge trying to shout something gave their captor a pause, then it made a little hiss and slithered further across the space. There was a muffled thud. “These ones were already almost out when they were injected.”

Injected? 

“Not that one.” the one who’d been holding Keith aloft earlier was speaking. “And the one who went to find him, you didn’t get enough in his either. He was trouble even after the injection.”

 _He means me and Keith?_ But Lance couldn’t remember any injection. Or... wait. Silver and blue metal, with red eyes, moving so fast he only caught a single clear glimpse. And just after that… He realized with cold certainty what must have happened. He’d seen whatever “injected” them, but hadn’t been fast enough to stop it. Keith, however, hadn’t eaten as much, been drugged as much. He’d kicked the thing away, maybe broken it? It hadn’t been able to get Lance, but the other one had clearly gotten Keith. Then Lance had hit his head when he fell, and the njerics hadn’t realized…

Well, that was an advantage. Lance didn’t know what exactly these guys wanted with them (though he could guess), and he didn’t care. They needed to get out, or get help. 

And it was dawning on him, despite not having a view of anything except Keith’s back, that he might be the only one who could. Pidge wasn’t going anywhere, and the njerics probably had all their eyes on Shiro. Hunk, Keith and Coran were unconscious. At least Allura wasn’t here yet, and-

Allura! An idea -- a horrible, desperate idea -- presented itself. Lance looked up into the sky, casting around for other options. There were so many ways this idea could go wrong, but a fight, just him on them right now, was doomed before it started.

Carefully, unsure if anyone was even watching, Lance started to inch his hand toward where he could feel his bayard digging into his hip.


	3. Tying Pidge Up Is Bad for Your Health

Pidge was about ready to scream with frustration. HAD screamed with frustration, actually, but that had been after the jerks gagged her, which somewhat defeated the purpose.

Now she was watching the two smaller njerics -- one called Issic whose scales were a foggy gray-white and one patterned in white and green who they called Mussuo -- crossing the square. As the first one brought here, she had the dubious fortune to have heard them all refer to one another. Their apparent leader, a large njeric with orange and blue scales whose name was Sein, kept a weather eye on Shiro and the fourth -- Ksero, the crimson and brown one who’d brought her here -- studied some sort of tablet device. Issic and Mussuo kept turning to study her with intense, bead-like eyes. 

She guessed she couldn’t blame them. First they’d made the mistake of only tying her hands - a mistake they realized when she’d gotten her bayard out, bound hands or not, and had taken Ksero by surprise. She might have won if Sein hadn't returned, stopped her and tied her more securely. They’d gagged her shortly after, which seemed unfair - she hadn’t even said the half of what she’d wanted to, especially once Shiro had been dragged in, completely unconscious. It was after she’d run over and started kicking at one of them, trying to get them to let him go, that they’d actually tied her to the house. 

It was a little bit embarrassing, but mostly, it was just deeply, deeply frustrating. Frustrating to see the others brought in, all of them out cold at first. Frustrating that she’d been caught in the first place - there had been a sharp pain in her ankle, then a swirl of fabric, and then she’d awoken some time later in this square with no Lance.

Lance. He’d been dragged in with Keith, both boneless, but she’d see an ugly bruise straying down from his hairline near the temple. She didn’t want to know what had happened. She just wanted to get them all out of here, and make these ungrateful, conniving snakes pay for what they did. Especially after Sein had hoisted Keith up like some sort of prop when Shiro had snapped the initial restraints upon seeing the final two carried in and dropped like that. 

“Are you going to bother tying these last two up?” hissed Ksero, looking up from its tablet. The two smaller ones paused, then headed for their small pile of supplies. 

Her eyes followed them as they cut right in front of her, then she looked beyond, to Keith and Lance. Keith lay in the uncomfortable position where he’d been dropped, but behind him, something… was Lance moving? Waking up?

She cast a quick glance at the others, but none of them was paying attention yet. Her attention went back to Lance. He was definitely moving, and not the vague, sleepy movements of someone just waking. It was slow, but steady. Deliberate. What was he planning? Her eyes darted back to their captors again. She wondered if she could kick up enough of a fuss to draw their attention for a few more seconds, to give him a little more time for whatever he was doing?

“Can’t we get them to hurry up?” One of the lackeys was saying as they drew some more rope from their gear and started to turn back. “These are nervous times, and-”

“Hey, rat breath,” Pidge shouted into her gag, ignoring how inarticulate the final result was thanks to the gag. “Why don’t you untie me and we can finish what we started earlier!”

Both of them turned their heads toward her, maybe trying to gauge whether or not she might be about to escape somehow. But in that moment of their inattention, she heard the rustle as Lance moved, no longer trying for stealth. Her eyes went back to him just as he brought his bayard up in its gun form and he began firing from flat on his back, squeezing off short blasts of icy blue energy into the night. Five, six, seven… 

Three of the njerics converged, one of them shouting, “I thought you said he was unconscious!” Lance shot the tablet-holder in an arm and narrowly missed another’s face, while several more shots went sailing up into the sky, hitting nothing and fizzling against the darkness. Then they were on him, yanking him upright, grabbing his and Keith’s bayards away and throwing them with the rest.

“Lance!” Pidge tried to yell, surging to her feet but being pulled up short by the rope. Issic twisted Lance’s arms behind him, holding him in place. Sein spun away from Shiro and surged across the space, its intent to punish the blue paladin for his attack etched in every movement..

Until something hit it from behind, knocking it into Lance and Issic. By the time Pidge had figured out what had struck their captor, Shiro had already dropped to a crouch, then driven into the snake again, lower this time, despite not having the use of his arms. Since the creature didn’t have legs, he wasn’t able to trip it, but he did knock it further off balance.

Issic tossed Lance aside and pulled a knife, as did Musso and Sein. Shiro didn’t back down, just kept low and kicked out again. Sein, as the closest, dodged a couple of the attacks with ease, then darted forward, taking advantage of a pause in Shiro’s barrage to thrust a knife decisively for his midsection.

Pidge realized what had happened a moment before the njeric did. The easily dodged attacks, followed by a conspicuous opening? From a former gladiator? Her brain put together what she expected to see just before it happened -- the opening suddenly closing up as Shiro brought his leg around, hard, into the thing’s arm. It hissed, grasping at its hand and backing up into its teammate, while the knife clattered away against the wall. 

Now Shiro was backing up, and three of the snake people followed him, wary despite that Shiro was still unarmed and wrapped with a fair amount of heavy rope. The fourth was over at their little pile of supplies, bleeding from the wound Lance had put in its arm as it pawed through the items hastily. 

“Ksero, help us!” Sein commanded. The injured njeric looked up, hesitated, then hurried over and drew his own knife. Four on one. Bad odds. Pidge strained at the rope holding her to the building again. If only she could get there...

“Hey, ease up.”

She glanced back at the familiar voice, to find Lance crouched behind her, looking unsteady, but holding something in his hand, which he was rubbing against the ropes. She blinked. The knife! The one Shiro had knocked away. As she watched, he sliced through the rope holding her in place, then slid the blade under a couple loops that had her arms bound to her sides and sliced through them as well with a bit of effort. As the ropes fell away, she clawed the gag out and scanned the space for their bayards.

There! The njerics had Shiro cornered, but clearly hadn’t counted on just how hard he could be to pin down, even four on one. They had knocked him out with venom to bring him here, after all. They might have been warned he was dangerous, but they clearly didn’t understand. 

She sprinted around the group, not bothering about stealth. Mussuo turned as she ran by and tried to grab at her, but she ducked under the outstretched hand and arrived at the little cache of their weapons. Her bayard seemed to leap into her hand, springing to life with barely any urging from her. She flung the other three across the square, just to get them away from the knot of njerics, then darted away just before Mussuo and Issic converged with that unsettling speed on the place where she’d been. Issic, face set in a hard expression, shouldered ahead of its teammate as it came after her.

She shot her bayard’s blade back, managing to get the cord wrapped around Issic’s right arm. It didn’t even slow down, but that was just fine. Pidge dashed at the nearest wall and jumped, feathering her jetback enough to plant her feet on the curved surface, then engaging it harder as she pushed off. She went surging past her attacker, over its left shoulder. The force of her momentum and the thrust of her jetpack caught it off guard enough to yank its arm across itself, then drag it backward into Mussuo. As she landed, she sent a jolt of electricity down the cord. Issic twitched and writhed. 

As she disengaged her weapon, another shot of blue went past her, and only missed Sein, who was still focusing largely on Shiro, because the njeric shifted uncannily just in time. Both it and Ksero chanced a glance back -- Ksero letting its injured arm hang limp and looking for all the world like it wanted to run.

“Pidge!” Lance shouted, but she already saw what he meant. Her dagger shot out again, splitting the difference between the two njerics by Shiro. Her blade sank home - in the ropes along Shiro’s side, cutting several loops at once. The bonds immediately loosened and Shiro shook free.

He smiled in thanks -- then his expression shifted in the space of a breath. She turned, but now that she knew to listen for it, she could hear the scales on stone, coming for her, and there was not nearly enough time to react. Maybe she could dodge the worst of it, or deflect, or-

She got around to face it just in time to see Mussuo come to a sudden, abrupt stop less than two feet from her, its green and white head lunging at her but not quite reaching. It looked as startled as she was, then scrabbled at a pair of yellow-armored arms belted around its midsection as it was hoisted up fractionally.

“Shiro!” Hunk shouted. Pidge heard the footsteps this time, and scampered aside as Shiro pounded through, his metal arm on an unerring arc that ended in the njeric’s face. It dropped into a heap, out cold. 

Her new position put Pidge in the perfect spot to see Ksero deciding to throw it all into the fight. It had a knife out and was slithering toward Shiro’s open back. She didn’t have enough time to get to a better position, so she aimed, fired and hoped. Her weapon struck true, catching it around the middle. Perfect. She pulled, and it lurched to the side but not enough to throw it off course. Not enough leverage! She pulled again… 

This time, hands closed over her own and pulled with her. The snake was yanked off its… well, tail, and into the pile of supplies. It didn’t get back up.

“Thanks,” Pidge said, turning to find Hunk standing next to her. He gave her a weary thumbs-up. 

While they had been taking care of that, Shiro was locked in combat with Sein. Having obviously freed and woken Hunk, Lance was now moving in, shoulder against one wall and his bayard up, searching for a shot. Shiro, catching sight of him, twisted down and in, burying a shoulder into the thing’s midsection. 

Lance sighted as the njeric raised its fists to bring them down on Shiro’s back. The shot went clean through their enemy’s shoulder, and it fell back, hissing in pain. Pidge couldn’t suppress a little surge of triumph. They could win this, they were going to get out.

“Stop!”

Pidge turned to see Issic had slithered away and now held Keith aloft by one arm, just as Sein had before -- though instead of threatening to just snap his neck, it was holding a knife against his throat. The njeric looked wildly between them, eyes seeming unable to focus on any of them for long. “Put down your weapons! Now” The blade trembled.

Shiro hesitated only a moment. Then he put his bayard down on the ground and raised his hands. Pidge, stomach sinking, followed suit, and she could hear the others doing the same. 

A crazed look of triumph blazed in its eyes as it said, “Ha! Paladins of Voltron, heroes? You’re soft.” In its hands, Keith was starting to stir, and Pidge’s stomach twisted again. If he moved too suddenly with that knife against his skin…

But before the thought could go further, the njeric suddenly cut off with a hiss and twisted its head around and down, as though trying to see behind it. “Wha…”

Then its muscles all went slack. The knife dropped from its hand and it released Keith as it fell heavily to the ground. 

Pidge, being the closest, lunged for Keith’s form and caught him across her shoulders. She was sure it looked ungainly and forced her nearly double, but it worked. She caught one arm, and managed to lower him gently to the ground. His eyes opened, closed again, then opened once more with considerable difficulty.

“Pidge?” he asked, puzzled. 

Her answer was a maybe inappropriate laugh of relief. Looking up she saw Coran standing over the njeric’s still form, a wiggling silver and blue metallic things in his hand. He looked exhausted, but also stern in a decidedly Coranish way.

“And this is why keeping captive Izzorian serpents is illegal in most parts of the universe except in controlled and very public conditions,” he said in his best lecturing voice. “Their fangs can puncture anything less than inch-thick reinforced armor and their venom is incredibly fast acting, making them dangerous to the unwary.”

Pidge started to laugh again, but the sound got cut off as an explosion of sound came from behind her -- the slithering of a njeric in full sprint, a crash, a clatter. She spun around, scanned the area.

Three of the njerics lay on the ground, but the final one, Sein, was gone.

And so was Lance.


	4. Always Secure a Getaway Vehicle

Lance was trying to keep his feet under him, but njerics in full slither could move fast, and he had nothing to break the steely grip it had on his wrist. He could sometimes get his other hand on the njeric’s fingers, but he couldn’t even begin to pry them loose. His bayard lay where he’d dropped it, back in the square.

“How did it all collapse? How did you upturn the nest, human?” the njeric demanded of him as they sped through empty side streets, past partially demolished buildings and the haunted remnants of battle. Lance lost his footing and was dragged a dozen yards before he got his legs under him again. He couldn’t even think about an answer.

They swung left, down a slightly wider street with shattered murals underfoot. “We only needed a couple more hours,” it raged, shaking Lance a little. “Then we could turn you over, and get our reward. And now… this. All this!”

“Halt!”

They skidded to a stop as three other njerics blocked the road up ahead. Lance’s captor drew itself up, dragging him to his toes as he guessed it was trying to intimidate the others out of its way. 

It didn’t work. The three advanced, long swords with green glows along the edges in their hands. Lance chanced a kick while it was distracted, but this just seemed to spur it into motion again. Its lower half seemed to boil along the ground as it sped down another abandoned alley.

Lance had already lost track of where they’d gone, which way the original square with the rest of the paladins lay, and the following few minutes didn’t help -- turning into a haze of running and falling, of myriad turns and sharp stops as avenue after avenue was cut off by more and more njerics, some armed and cloaked in similar uniform while others, whether drawn by the commotion or called to arms, looked like they’d just been out for the festival. 

As it dragged him through the crumbling shell of a larger building that might have been a meeting hall or school, he heard it mutter, “They will be here and I will not face them empty handed!” to either Lance or, more likely, no one at all. Lance didn’t want to argue, He felt like he’d like nothing better than to just pass out, but that was a bad idea, a terrible one, and he fought to stay awake and upright with everything he had left. 

He trusted. It was only a matter of time.

After maybe a minute of running without seeing any more of its brethren, the njeric yanked him around another corner and slammed him into a wall, pinning him there with an arm across his chest. “What did you do?” It demanded. “Your shots failed to kill us, but everything went wrong. Everyone knows.” It slammed its free fist into the wall next to his head. “What. Did. You. DO?”

Somewhere deep in his terror and exhaustion, Lance felt a surge of pride. He had REALLY gotten under this thing’s skin. “This wasn’t... the plan,” he said, surprised at how difficult speaking was. His lungs felt too small, or the air too thin, and everything felt shaky. “I was just… signalling... reinforcements.”

The snake reared back slightly. “Reinforcements?” It glanced skyward with its eyes only, as though not wanting him to notice its sudden apprehension.

Lance tried a confident laugh, but it came out a cough. “Yeah. I fired... toward your council. Even if Allura... didn’t see... gunfire aimed that way... _had_ to draw attention.”

And with a sense of impossibly perfect cosmic timing, the sound of a footstep echoed from the end of the alley, followed by a familiar, beautiful voice: “Put down that paladin.”

Both he and the njeric turned their heads. Allura stood at the end of the alley, weapon in hand. A dozen more of the snake people were arrayed behind her, armed and glaring. From the sound of it, more njerics were moving into position at the other end of the alley.

For a moment, the arm on his chest pressed down harder, leaving his lungs struggling to expand. Then it released him and slithered back, hands up. As the njerics arrested their own, Allura ran up to him.

“Lance are you OK?” As he wobbled a little on his feet, she slipped his arm over her shoulders and put her own around his waist, taking some of his weight. “Come on, let’s get out of here. You need to get that head wound looked at.”

He smiled as she helped him from the alley. Everything still felt horribly fragile and a gorilla was trying to pound its way out of his skull, but his stupid ploy had worked, and now Allura was here with sympathy and her arm around him. 

This might be his favorite terrible day ever.


	5. The Difference Between Sleep and Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is back and safe. But sometimes the aftermath is harder than you expect.

Lance stared blearily at the ceiling of his room, trying to will his eyes to close. They weren’t interested in complying.

The rest of the castle had to be asleep by now, but while Lance was feeling tired, he wasn’t very  _ sleepy.  _ He chose to blame the healing pod, which had left most of his body feeling refreshed but his mind needing more of a rest. Or maybe, his body wanted a rest but his mind wouldn’t stop going on about things? He couldn’t exactly tell. He just knew that it seemed like sleep might not be on the menu this evening.

He’d been the only one hurt badly enough to require the use of one of the pods, and if he was being honest, he wasn’t sure quite how to feel about it. On the one hand, he was really glad everyone else was OK. On the other, he’d only needed anything more than a good night’s sleep because of his own clumsiness. Sure, there were bruises and aches from being dragged around by large, angry snake-people but the big scare had been his head. You didn’t mess with a concussion -- especially one bad enough to literally knock you out. 

But of course, if not for that would he have been able to do what he did? It all left him feeling conflicted, and the two warring thoughts were contributing to making sleep just a fond idea. Instead, for the umpteenth time since he’d gone to bed, his mind started running over the events of the day.

Coran had been waiting for him when the pod opened, wearing that look of serious anxiety that he always had when one of them had gotten badly hurt. It was like every time, he was expecting that something would have gone wrong and he castle’s healing wouldn’t have worked. 

Truth be told, it made Lance feel a little guilty every time he got himself hurt enough to need the pod.

“There we are,” Coran said, helping Lance out of the pod. “So how are you feeling? No dizziness? Pain? Detatching joints?”

“Detatch… what?” Lance snapped his head around to look to Coran so fast that for a moment he  _ did  _ feel dizzy. But Coran waved a hand dismissively.

“You’d know if you had it. Trust me, once the first hand drops off, you realize something is  _ very  _ wrong. The njerics are very lucky that human physiology didn’t react worse with Izzorian serpent venom. Did you know there are over a thousand different breeds, all created to milk for the sedation effects of different types of beings, but there are none for humans because …” Coran paused, pondering his own question a moment before finishing, “well, because we didn’t really have a need. I can only imagine which breed they stole for this plot.”

“They probably just grabbed whatever they got a chance to,” Lance said with a shrug as Coran took his arm and started steering him toward where fresh clothes lay in a neat pile. “They didn’t seem all that smart to me.”

The answer he got from Coran was a sound that conveyed more than a word could have, entire volumes of anger and disgust. Lance chanced a glance at the Altean and found his face knit in a steely, staring mask even though he wasn’t looking at anything particular. 

“You don’t understand,” he said, and his voice was a layer of quiet and control over a whole host of Lance-didn’t-even-know-what. “Using a serpent with the wrong sort of venom could have killed you, or me, or all of the innocent njerics on that planet. The serpents can be controlled, but only imperfectly, and with their speed, stopping them can sometimes be near to impossible. If something interferes with and breaks the signal to their shells, they can wreak havoc before anyone can stop them.” His voice pitched up on the word “havoc” in emphasis.

“I guess we got lucky then,” Lance said, grabbing the shirt off the top of the pile and beginning to get dressed. 

Coran didn’t answer, instead crossing to one of the displays and tapping his fingers on it. Even in the after-healing haze, Lance could read the mood enough to hold his tongue and get dressed quickly. As he finished, Coran still hadn’t spoken any further, so Lance decided to just head for the door.

“Oh, Hunk and Pidge said they’d be in the kitchen, if you were feeling hungry,” Coran said when Lance had almost reached the door. “I recommend getting something in your stomach. Then sleep’ll be the best medicine, mark my words.” 

Lance stopped, feeling oddly guilty. “Thanks,” he said. He stepped forward and let the door open, breathing deep as a less antiseptic wave of air wash over him. But before he could leave, something occurred to him and he turned in the door. 

“Coran, did you know what sort of venom that serpent had?”

“What? No, of course not. I mean, it’s on the armored shell, but it’s not like there was time to look.”

“But…” Lance groped for a way to ask the question that wouldn’t make it sound like an accusation, because he sure didn’t  _ blame  _ the Altean. “You used it on the njeric who had Keith anyway?”

Coran’s hands stilled on the display, but didn’t immediately answer. Lance stood uncertainly in the doorway, wondering if he’d said something wrong. But at last Coran’s shoulders relaxed a little, and Lance heard him blow out a breath.

“Sometimes you have to take a chance,” he said. And once again he thought he heard a rare edge of the steel that underlay almost everything the man did. Lance thought of his own literal shot in the dark.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess you do. Good night, Coran.”

And the door shut behind him.

Lance began making his way through the halls, at a leisurely stroll at first. Then a trot. Then a jog. He kept his eyes forward, refusing to focus on exactly why his pace kept quickening.  _ Kitchen. Go to the kitchen. _

When he stepped through the door to the kitchen a couple minutes later, two sets of eyes rose in unison from the computer screen they were both peering at to stare at him. What seemed like an instant later, the world got much, much smaller as Hunk’s arms surrounded him and squeezed with a strength that would be terrifying if Lance had anything less than complete trust in him. A moment later, a smaller pressure told him Pidge had turned the whole thing into a group hug.

“Glad to see you’re already up,” Hunk said, squeezing a little tighter for a second then releasing him. “Come on. There’s cookies, or soup. You can have either, or both. But not at the same time. Well… I wouldn’t recommend both at the same time at least.” Hunk was bustling around the kitchen, leaving Lance standing by Pidge. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked, her smile still in place but her eyes searching for something. 

This again. Lance grinned. “Pretty good. Coran said that since none of my limbs are falling off, I should be in good shape.”

Her expression went from searching to skeptical, one eyebrow popping up. “Limbs … falling off?”

“I don’t know how to take half of what he says in the nurse’s office,” he said, shaking his head and walking over to one of the stools. “I’m just glad to see everyone and to be back here.”

That eyebrow-up look remained, but he just kept smiling and didn’t elaborate. He didn’t say how even though he didn’t see anything, hear anything,  _ sense  _ anything, he’d still nearly been running through the halls as he made his way to the kitchen alone. Nothing was there, and if he admitted that some stupid, feral part of him kept imagining strong hands grabbing him from some doorway and dragging him away to where none of his friends could find him, into a growing dark, they’d chuck him back in the pod assuming something was still off in his head. 

Maybe they weren’t wrong.

The clatter of food being set on the counter in front of him brought Lance back to himself. He couldn’t identify the light green soup in the proffered bowl, but it smelled good enough to make him realize that Coran had definitely been right about getting something to eat. As he dug in with gusto, Hunk returned with a plate of cookies, one of which he handed to Pidge and another which he started nibbling himself. 

“So, Pidge told us what you did,” he said, leaning his elbows on the surface and focusing on Lance. “Seriously, what made you think of that? I mean, your idea of a good idea used to be building fake us out of clothes before we snuck out. How did you know they could even see your shots?” 

“I knew where they said Allura was, so I just had to hope,” Lance said around a mouthful of soup. It was warm and savory, but the strings of meat in the broth were sweeter than expected. “What else was I going to do? I know I’m fast, but believe me, those guys were definitely faster.” 

He meant it to be light, a little bit of a self-deprecating joke, but Pidge’s eyes looked down suddenly, away from him, and Hunk flinched.  _ What the _ … and then it hit him. What must it have looked like from their point of view? 

He could barely remember the end of the confrontation in their captors’ base of operations. There had been a grip like doom, a force that had wrenched his arm, and speed that had dragged rather than led him -- a terrible, rushing current that could not be fought. But to them he’d just been gone, until Allura found him nearly a quarter of the way across the city. 

The experience had been awful, but he was actually glad  _ he’d _ been the one. Not just because he didn’t want one of his friends to have gone through that -- he still remembered the terrifying njeric shattering the wall an inch from his head and wouldn’t want any of his friends to have felt as he had at that moment --  but also because he’d rather be in the heart of a situation than just waiting in helpless ignorance for news about someone else. 

He guessed from their faces they felt the same way.

Clearing his throat, he said, “Anyway, Pidge, I have to ask. How did you end up gagged when Shiro wasn’t?”

Her expression darkened, but there was a glitter in her eye that Lance read as _ it was worth it _ . “I had some free time, so I was trying to calculate the most effective biology-based insults for snake people. I guess they didn’t like my scientific method.”

Hunk laughed outright while Lance snickered and said, “Seriously? What were the preliminary results?”

“Yeah,” Hunk put in. “Was it insulting their parents? That feels universal. Or maybe the fact that they can’t wear shoes.”

Pidge leaned forward, ignoring the non sequitur about shoes. “Weirdly, they didn’t even seem to get it when I insulted their mothers,” she said, voice low as though passing the information along in confidence. “Maybe they don’t really have those? But they didn’t like digs at their looks, especially Mussuo. And they  _ hated  _ insults about their combat prowess.”

“So you insulted their mothers, their looks and their muscles, to their faces,” Hunk said, looking at her. Then he turned to Lance. “And you wrecked their plans and called in reinforcements…”

“Sure did! With some help,” Lance said. 

Hunk dropped his forehead to the counter. “Man. All I did was sleep through most of it.”

Further iterations on what had happened back in the city were cut off as the door opened again and Keith walked in. When he saw the three of them clustered around the counter over food, he froze.

It was Hunk who moved first, gesturing him over almost immediately with a wave of his cookie, even though his head was still resting on the counter. “Come grab a snack,” he said, punctuating it with a yawn.

For a moment Keith hesitated in the door, as though whether or not a cookie was a good idea. But then he crossed to the counter to take one.

Pidge, picking up where they’d left off before the interruption, turned to Hunk. “Hey, you woke up in time to save my butt, so you won’t hear me complaining.” She had finished her cookie and reached for another one. 

“And boy, was that disorienting. I opened my eyes to see you shaking me awake-” Hunk gestured toward Lance. “And I thought for a minute I just overslept one of Allura’s alarms. Until I saw the fight, all I could think was, I’m gonna be in so much trouble…”

All three of them laughed. Behind them, the door hissed open again. They all turned to see Keith on his way out again. Lance’s immediate reaction was to let him go -- if he didn’t want to be social, it certainly wasn’t Lance’s job to force the issue.  

But then his mind went to Coran’s comment.  _ With their speed, stopping them can sometimes be near to impossible. _ And Keith had seen it and reacted in time to save him. 

Lance pushed his bowl away (it was empty. When had it gotten empty?) and stood up. “I think I’m going to head to bed,” he said, grabbing a cookie for the road. Remembering Hunk’s yawn, he added, “Probably we all should. If we’re tired tomorrow, Coran’s going to be impossible. Probably ask us if all our eyeballs are still in our heads or something.”

The other two waved goodnight as he hurried out the door to catch up with the red lion’s pilot. Keith paused at the sound of footsteps coming up, glanced over his shoulder to check who it was. The expression on his face was unreadable. 

“Hey,” Lance said as he jogged up. Keith started walking and Lance kept pace beside him. Now he just to figure out how to word this in a way that didn’t sound weird. 

Keith took the initiative away from him though. “Thanks for getting us out of that attack, but how about we just… we don’t talk about what happened back on that planet?”

“What?” Lance stopped for a moment, taken off balance by this. Then he stomped after him, matching his pace again as he said, “You jerk, I was trying to thank you for stopping them from drugging me!”

Keith stopped and stared at him. If the startled look on his face was any indication, this was far from what Keith had expected. Well, that made two of them. Lance couldn’t quite tell what had him looking like that - if like Hunk it was the fact that he’d been out of the fight and unable to help as much as he wanted, or if this was just the general Keith awkwardness or... 

And then came the murky memory of a moment in the darkness, up on the hill. Keith staring out over the crowd and then… had he… oh god, he had...

“But… yeah, maybe that’s for the best.” Lance finished lamely. 

The two of them stared at one another another long second. Then something happened on Keith’s face, the slightest twitch of expression. Lance blinked.

“Did you just smile?”

“What?”

“Did you. Just. Smile?” Lance repeated, narrowing his eyes. “At something I said? You almost never smile around me. What is it? Is there soup on my face?”

The sudden shift in mood seemed to have set Keith on the wrong foot again. He raised his hands half into a warding gesture. “I smile! And no, there’s no soup…”

“You both seem recovered.”

Both of them turned to see Shiro walking up. They both took a step away from one another, so the three of them formed a loose triangle. Keith shot him one last look that Lance chose to interpret as  _ the not talking about it starts now. _ Then he raised a hand, the one with the cookie, in a lazy farewell. “I’m heading to bed. Good night you two.”

“Goodnight,” Shiro and Lance both echoed. Then Shiro focused on Lance and asked, “You heading that way too? It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah,  I think so.” Lance had to admit, his arms and shoulder felt metal-threaded and too heavy by half. Shiro moved aside, falling into step with him as they followed Keith down the hall but at a slower pace. “Coran told me I should try to get some sleep.”

“Wise advice.”

They walked in silence for a short while, long enough for Lance to be about ready to break it with an inane story, when Shiro finally clapped him on the shoulder and spoke.

“I just want to tell you that you did good,” Shiro said. “I’m sure you know, but we would have been in real trouble without what you did.”

“It wasn’t a big deal. We all helped, “ Lance downplayed, pretty sure he’d blushed a little. How did you take credit when the guy giving it to you could probably have beaten all those guys alone if they hadn’t had hostages? The answer, in this case at least, was “awkwardly.”

Shiro had let him get the protest out of the way before his face turned serious. “And how are you feeling?”

Was everyone going to ask him this? “Good as new,” Lance said, tapping the formerly injured temple gently with two fingers as they arrived outside his room. There was something in the way he asked it that had  Lance pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the head wound, but everything else was fine too. It was all fine. HE was fine. It was just in Shiro to worry. Not that he could be blamed, Lance thought guiltily under the man’s gaze. But he forced a smile and said, “You know Coran wouldn’t let me out of his  _ sight  _ if I didn’t have a clean bill of health. He’s a total den mother.”

That didn’t exactly put Shiro at ease -- that wary watchfulness in his eyes told Lance as much. But it was enough to make Shiro say, “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Get some rest? We have training tomorrow.”

“Aww. Really? Didn’t we earn a free day?”

”This  _ was  _ your free day,” Shiro called over his shoulder as he walked away.

“We got kidnapped!”

“We’re not kidnapped now.” He waved goodnight without looking back again. 

Lance thought about arguing further, then changed his mind and turned to enter his room, letting his head fall forward and his shoulders droop. Training tomorrow. Better get to bed. 

Which brought him to the present, lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling in case there was a spell for undisturbed sleep there. It had to be halfway through the night by now, but he couldn’t bring himself to check the time. Training tomorrow was going to be  _ rough _ .

These thoughts were interrupted by a quiet knock at his door. He blinked, trying to decide if he was hallucinating, since the tapping had come so lightly. Luckily the sound answered the question for him, as it came again. He levered himself up and wandered over to the door, wondering who it could be. Coran maybe? He could have forgotten a test and…

The door slipped open to reveal Princess Allura, hands folded primly and eyebrows knit together in consternation. She was looking off to the left, but as he stepped into the open doorway, her attention shifted to him. Her pensive expression softened a little as she looked at him. “I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said. “I was just wondering how you are feeling.”

Fighting through his lethargy, Lance leaned on the door frame in what he hoped was a suave pose and grinned. “Great now that someone so beautiful has come to see me.”

Her eyes narrowed and the smile slipped. “Well, it certainly sounds like you’re back to your old self.”

“Not quite, but I bet a kiss… would uh…” He trailed off. The icy expression on her face was sharp enough that she could have weaponized it. Clearing his throat, Lance straightened up and gestured for her to enter if she wanted. “Er, you didn’t wake me. To tell the truth, I couldn’t sleep.” As she walked past him, he wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, feeling a bit sheepish. 

She stopped and turned, standing against the wall. Her face had lost most of the ice again. “I am sorry to hear it.”

“I’ll get there eventually,” he responded. “But what made you visit this late?”

“I…” she trailed off, eyes again focusing off to her left for a moment. Then they came back to him, and this time they were all seriousness and regret. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. “

That caught him flat-footed. “ _ You’re _ sorry?” he asked, returning to his bed and sitting there, suddenly keenly aware he was in his pajamas and bare-footed. He considered whether going for his slippers would make it more or less awkward.

“I thought the festival would be good for the group,” she said. “And I… no. No, that’s wrong.”

Lance tilted his head, watching her carefully, but didn’t say anything. To be honest, he wasn’t sure what  _ to  _ say. Maybe if he was at a hundred percent. Maybe if he’d been able to get some sleep. But he wasn’t, and hadn’t, and his mind couldn’t conjure a single good response that was unlikely to bring back the ice. So instead, he just waited.

“Looking back, it was a perfect place for an ambush, but I wanted… I thought we could pretend things were how they used to be, where not everything was dangerous. When I, and those I was with, could just relax for a night in one of the beautiful places of the universe without fighting for our lives. I should never have ignored the danger, never have let us all get separated…” her attention returned to him. “I should never have put everyone in a position like that. We were just lucky that you were able to signal me, and that nothing worse happened.”

Shaking his head, Lance said, “If it wasn’t for Keith… or Pidge or Shiro. Everyone… we worked together just like always.” How had this turned into him comforting  _ her _ ? He’d thought she came here to do the opposite. Well, no help for it. “I guess it just turned out to be an unusual team-building exercise. One that I think I’ll be happy to  _ never  _ do again, but still…”

She chuckled, even though it wasn’t really funny. “I’ll make a note of it in the training manual.”

“Oh, there’s a manual now?”

“We’re working on it.” A real smile finally took her face. “So, what’s keeping you awake? Before me, that is.”

It was his turn to look away. “Who knows,” he said. “Just… couldn’t get my mind to shut off. It’s stupid. Shiro is going to hate me in training tomorrow.”

“I think he’ll understand.”

It was Lance’s turn to chuckle. “I hope so. Especially if we have to form Voltron.  It’s never good when your leg falls asleep.”

“Well then, it would be good for you to fall asleep as soon as you can,” she said, voice quiet. “So, when you feel ready to rest, I won’t keep you.”

It was lightly said, but there was a serious note to her voice. He chanced a glance at her and saw in her face a mix of concern and compassion that jolted him. He looked away again in alarm, feeling a blush creep up his face. Partly it was her tone that did it, and that forthright look in her face when she was worried. But also, partly it was that she had come here and been honest, and he’d met that honesty and concern with joking and deflection. Met  _ everyone’s  _ concern with that, actually, every time they asked him a question without really asking. _ How am I feeling? They all knew Coran wouldn’t have released me if I weren’t physically OK. That wasn’t their worry. _

He sighed. Someday, he really was going to stop being an idiot.

“I don’t  _ want  _ to sleep,” he finally said, clasping his hands in front of him and training his gaze on them. He didn’t want to show this sort of weakness to her, but he also felt like he could trust her not to hold it against him in this moment. 

“Do you not feel right?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It’s more… when I was in the pod, healing, I was dreaming, I was…” One hand moved unconsciously to the other wrist, where the bruises had been healed, but he swore he could still feel the punishing pressure, dragging and yanking. “I was back there, and the alleys were endless, and the galra ship was coming. And I knew you and the others would come find me, but I was … scared.” He hated how hard that word was to get out. His fingers tightened on his own wrist, mimicking that ghost of a feeling. “About how long it might take. Given a choice between laying awake and that, I guess my mind chose the former”

“Oh, Lance.” He braced for the pity he expected to hear in her voice, but heard only genuine concern. He felt a warmth on the back of his fingers, then pressure gently unclasping his hand from his wrist, and he looked up to see Allura sitting next to him, folding his hand within both of hers. She stared at him until he meets her eyes.

“We will always come for you.”

“I know.” He tried to grin, but it was like the honesty of the moment had stuck his bravado somewhere deep, and the smile was fleeting.

“And we will always be here for you.”

“I know.” He did, he  _ did _ . “I told you it was stupid.”

“It is not-” she squeezed his hand lightly for emphasis- “stupid. We all have things our minds have to process. Some horrible things…” For a moment her eyes went far away, but the expression was gone in an instant, and she smiled at him, warm and steady. “How about this. You close your eyes, and I’ll tell you a story. And if you feel like you can fall asleep at some point, just tell me.”

What? Allura wanted him to relax and try to sleep? While she was here, sitting in his room? Did she honestly expect that was going to help him drift off?

But… he caught her eyes and saw nothing but sincerity there. And his mind caught on her words --  _ horrible things _ . Things like the loss of nearly everything and everyone? She’d been through something so harrowing, Lance’s mind still balked every time he tried to imagine it, imagine what he would feel if someone told him Earth had been destroyed while he was on the far side of space, and everyone he knew was-

He closed his eyes. Had she had someone do this for her? Or wanted someone to, but no one had? He couldn’t bring himself to think about it, so he decided to take the gift, in the spirit it was given.

“I think that would help.”

She shifted to the floor and he arranged himself as well as he could. His eyes drifted closed as she started to speak. “What should I… oh! How about Arvenne. Arvenne is well known across the galaxy for its first day of spring. When the second sun chases away the winter snows, the ground becomes completely carpeted in lesoto flowers. The river banks, the mountains, every inch of it covered in these beautiful, blue, star-shaped flowers.”

“Mmm. I like blue,” Lance murmured. He heard her chuckle. The darkness behind his eyes took on a blue-green hue in his imagination. Blue flowers, everywhere. It sounded nice.

“My father took me to see them one spring, because there’s something special about Arvenne’s flowers. No one has been able to duplicate the scent of them in a lab, or capture the scent from the flowers themselves.”

Her voice actually was fairly soothing. Lance felt something in his back finally unknot, relax. He hadn’t realized how tense he had been. 

“It’s one of the most lovely scents in the entire universe, and you can only experience it firsthand. So my father decided we would have a picnic...”

He thought he could sleep now, but his jaw didn’t seem to want to move. So he drifted off, feeling the warm pressure on his fingers and knowing that whatever happened, they would always get him back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, I said I would try this and it got away from me a little bit ... sorry about that. Also sorry it took longer than I expected. For some reason, the latest season of Voltron just took the wind out of my fanfic sails. :( So had to force my way through a couple bits of this and I hope it's not too disappointing. Thanks as always to everyone who takes the time to read this!


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